I like this one a lot, it's my main instrument for sequencer work (I seldom use the onboard sequencer though). I feel it works very well for music like jazzy funk, soul and so on. Probably good for "jingle"-type synth work too. Not as good for techno/synth. Much of the "playable" feeling is due to the great keyboard, which has polyphonic aftertouch without the "clickiness" of Ensoniq kbds. Try routing poly pressure to Pan, take a chord and vary the pressure between the fingers - the individual notes move around in the stereo image... The handling is a little complex, due to a lot of buttons, but the display is very large and very backlit. The RAM based action (S2 contains 4 MB RAM, half for patches/effects, half for sequencer data) makes it more like a computer - it has a clipboard with cut and paste of complete parameter pages, Undo, etc. Anyway, the S2 is cool but strange, especially due to the RAM/floppy architecture which requires that you're very careful about saving to disk after each session.

Comments About the Sounds:
The combination of some really great samples, two multi-mode resonant filters (each can be LP, BP, HP, Parametric Boost or Cut), and a special way of continuously crossfading between two "oscillators", give it a sound that is both warm and clear. The sound is not as "bassy" and compact as for example recent Roland synths, which can be good or bad depending on the music type. Ac. piano is rather basic, but there was an additional multisampled grand included on disk if you really need that. Good features in the synth architecture are graphic, infinite-stage, loopable envelopes (amp, pitch, filter and pan) and multi-stage key tracking. On the down side: you can easily get digital distorsion (probably the internal resolution could be higher). Of course, this can be used creatively, but most often it doesn't sound too nice. Also, the modulation routings in a Patch are too fixed, and pitch bend can only be +/- 3 semitones! (This was changed with the Turbo upgrade and later versions). The effects are basic, especially the configuration.